We have yet another triumph of Orthodoxy in the removal of all female cabinet members from an official picture with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. There are three new female cabinet members — Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, Culture Minister Miri Regev and Minister for Senior Citizens Gila Gamliel — but you would never know it from the pictures in Jewish ultra-Orthodox publications which either removed them or even replaced them in the shot with male cabinet members.
One publication appears to have pixelated the faces of the women while others edited them out. You will recall recently how such publications removed the image of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Ironically, ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox parties were allies of Netanyahu in the recent election, but balked at showing his full cabinet team. In airbrushing away of the new Justice Minister and first-ever minister of gender equality (Gamliel) completed the overwhelming irony.
Many Orthodox publications simply refused to publish the picture due to the inclusion of the women.
Yomleyom, an ultra-Orthodox weekly newspaper run by the Shas political party, actually transplanted a man in the place of one of the women. Yomleyom’s deputy editor, Rabbi Moshe Shafir, did not see anything ridiculous in the exercise and explained “We honor the women specifically because of their special merits and we have reservation from looking upon women as an object.” In other words, we value them so much that we delete them from historic photos and government images. Call it elevation through elimination.
Source: NBC
http://nypost.com/2012/02/07/i-was-a-hasidic-jew-but-i-broke-free/
THE POST: From a very early age, Hasidic girls are expected to wear skirts and shirts that cover them down to their wrists and ankles. But during your adolescence the law became even more restrictive.
If you had a curvy body, then there was something wrong with you. No matter what I wore, the school principal always had a problem with me, because I’m a little Kardashian-esque and I developed young. My principal would walk by and slap me on the ass and be like, “Your skirt shows too much.”
What was your feeling about the recent news story about the segregated B110 bus in Williamsburg?
I rode that bus countless times in my childhood. It never bothered me to ride in the back. To be honest, I didn’t want to sit anywhere near those men. Those men are scary; they’re not trained in civility. They’re terrified of what would happen if the genders weren’t segregated. They think of lust as this uncontrollable, wild impulse.
That’s what was going through my head [at age 12] when [a sexual assault] happened in the basement with my [male] cousin: It’s obviously all your fault and not his, and you need to keep quiet about it.
Over the past 10 or 20 years [the Hasidic community] has gone from being extreme to being ultra-extreme. They’ve passed more laws from out of nowhere, limiting women — there’s a rule that women can’t be on the street after a certain hour. That was new when I was growing up. We hear all these stories about Muslim extremists; how is this any better? This is just another example of extreme fundamentalism.
Paul
I enjoy and respect those aspects of religion that do not discriminate, stand for equality, and foster socio-evolutionary attainment in the overriding goals. What I find myself disrespecting are all those chauvinistic aspects of religions. Orthodox and other extremist religious practices, I find distasteful, contradictory, and hypocritical. If that makes me a bigot in your eyes, then perhaps you should spend more time thinking about it.
issac – I accept all religions.
Davidm2575
Understanding something is the first step in realizing its value. One can use the word value in place of many other words as it connotes the worth of any perspective. There is no value, as relates to the evolution of humanity to a higher iteration, coming from the perspectives of the extremely religious or this orthodox practice. These perspectives are anchors that drag humanity backwards in time. Any cursory review of history will illustrate this. ‘Removing photos of women in order to elevate them’ is not only hypocritical but damaging to all females. It is as if this perversion in a nation with which the US is intimate, is our perversion as well.
It is not an issue of ‘mocking what I don’t understand’ but mocking what I do understand. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or any other sort of genius to understand that power manifests itself in various ways. The only reason these buffoons in orthodox society subjugate women is because they cannot see themselves giving up their elevated stations in their perverse society.
One can link these perversions to whatever fairy tale one wishes, they are still perversions. The condition that females go along with this is as graphic an example of subjugation as one can have. The females have been subjugated mentally as well as physically. Resisting the appearance of women in the governing levels of society is nothing more than the paranoia that goes along with forcing people to stay beneath their rightful elevated level.
It used to be that a person could be born a slave. This is not the case any more although it was once defended as ‘natural’ and ‘understood’ to be an example of the correct ways of mankind, by governments as well as the churches of all major religions. What is remarkable is that in some of the most enlightened nations on this earth, one can be born a woman and find oneself as a lesser being, trapped in a world of physiological perversion and religious mumbo jumbo.
David, I hope you understand.
issac – I don’t know about david, but I understand that you are an anti-religious bigot. It doesn’t become you.
issac wrote: “It is not an issue of ‘mocking what I don’t understand’ but mocking what I do understand.”
You prove that you do not understand when you claim that this is about religious men subjugating women.
The hasidic magazines and newspapers that have a policy of not publishing photos of women do so because of the issue of modesty. There is nothing in the Jewish law that prohibits it, but there are principles of morality there that are supportive. Their respected commentaries warn about anything with the opposite sex that is more than professional and business like. They warn about winking at each other. So the hasidic Jews have developed strict codes of segregation to keep themselves in line with the high standards of morality that they have. That has led to them having the custom of not publishing photos of women. Note that these Jews also do not watch television or read secular newspapers. The basis is that they believe women should be appreciated for who they are and what they do, not for what they look like. The basis has to do with what they allow their eyes to look upon. It is not about denigrating or subjugating women. That line of thinking is from the feminist playbook.
Their reasons are not without any merit. The scientific evidence indicates that men think about sex twice as much as women do. Furthermore, men are more stimulated visually than are women. Such leads to them being disproportionately into pornography, which leads to higher incidences of adultery among men. Obviously many men in history have recognized this and taken steps to avoid pornography or sexually suggestive images. The hasidic Jews have taken it even further.
To the hasidic Jew, when anyone claims that these photo edits indicate that they do not respect women, such is considered to be the most malicious slander and libel. It is notable that when Hillary Clinton ran for Senator in New York, she too was edited out of photos. However, she also carried the vote from the Orthodox Jews in overwhelming numbers. Yeah, these men who edit women out of photos voted for a woman over a man for the high office of Senator.
You may whine all you like about how unfair this is to women, or how regressive this is for society, but that is only because you embrace the precepts taught by the religion of secular humanism. You view history and the future through the lens of gender equality. Not everyone agrees with your assumptions in this matter. While the free sex hippies of the 60’s are now running the government, and laws have reflected their values, the change is not looked upon as an improvement by everyone. Some see that associated with this change are higher divorce rates and the breakdown of the family. The sluggish economy and difficulty in businesses being able to hire people also are blamed on the changes that you think are good.
DDS
Max, maybe the girls were allowed to lock their door at night, but then there was the younger group of girls, maybe grandma sat guard duty.
Yes they can.
Max-1
I think David had us all going for a while, myself at least. This last series of responses of his illustrate only one thing, that he is having us all on. No one can be that far off the beam, can they?
issac wrote: “No one can be that far off the beam, can they?”
You guys prefer to mock what you don’t understand. I just try harder to understand where people are coming from. I thought at first they were motivated by a hatred of women, or by a disagreement of whether or not women should be in authority. I educated myself and learned that was not the reason for these repeated incidents.
davidm
You know who else said women should be modest?
Michele Duggar.
Say, do you think Mrs. Dugger allowed her daughters the modesty when she allowed her molesting son to reside in the same home he molested his sisters in?
Annie,
You see, a man is really not as strong willed as a woman is. This is why she is responsible for the frailty of manhood. She must not be seen or man goes crazy and afflicts his gender inequality upon her in several ways that all focus on rendering her subject to his inability to use self control… You know, it’s her fault he can’t be personally responsible.
davidm,
Would you agree?
How many feminists does it take to skin a cat?
That’s NOT funny!
Because a democratic society always erases women and Palestinians from the process… YES?
I see that they erased the three women, but it also appears that they added a man. There were only three men in the second row and now there are four. Maybe one of the women was a shapeshifter?
David
I finally figured you out. You’re a debater. You can take any argument, regardless of how ridiculous it is and argue, using a cohesive string of points, complete with supporting material. In this posting you have proven yourself a master debater. Will you be working with the FIFA spokesman on his, ‘We are happy to be investigated.’ argument?
So the rule of law and all the truth that flows from it is your main concern?
Yet this is the type of issue you discuss when talking Israel. #statepoweroverruleoflaw
Mike, LOL!
David your young man needs to get some counseling, or self control. He should work on his own weakness of character and stop being so bothered.
davidm:
This gentleman needs to impose spiritual and physical discipline on himself to curb his lustful inclinations. I suggest that whenever he begins to feel overwhelmed, he return to his room and chastise himself in the traditional monastic manner. His comment verges on hysteria.
Mike – when is the last time you crossed a public college campus in the late spring? You, too, will be looking for the cold showers.
Mike, I really admire your self-restraint. You referred to him as a gentleman. This student had 8 likes on his post, so I guess he has at least 8 friends who are not afraid to say that they agree with him.
Just now, I came across this tirade published on Facebook from a single Christian student who protests how women dress on his university campus. It is hard for some not to laugh, but the guy is really serious. It certainly pertains to the subject matter in this thread, but from a Christian sect rather than a Jewish one.
===
Public rebuke for a public sin. They say that I’m harassing girls, but honestly they’re the one’s sexually harassing all the men on campus by the way that they’re dressing immodestly. They’re projecting their bodies on me, when I have to walk to a class and I by happenstance, catch a glance of this Rated X material… I have to fight that image out of my mind. They’re raping my eyes! I ought not have to turn my eyes away to avoid looking at their immodesty! They’re the real criminals!
If a man tried to throw himself on you, then you should REBUKE HIM!
By you exposing your body, you’re throwing yourself on me, and I’m having to rebuke you to get you to stop showing your body to me… No, I am not looking, and I don’t even want to look! However, I cannot help but see it when I’m walking to class, you cross my line of sight and I have been sexually assaulted by your naked lewdness! I have to turn away from looking and rebuking you is exactly what you deserve.
I don’t want to hear you boo-hoo that I’m offending you by rebuking you, or that you are being harassed by me telling you to cover up your nakedness and put on some clothes… Whose the real criminal out here? If you wouldn’t show off your body to everyone, exposing yourself and making my pure and holy, covenant eyes have to come across your nakedness…… I would never even say anything to you.. if you weren’t offending me, then I wouldn’t rebuke you for you offending me!
Stop sexually harassing me and showing off your body in public! GET SOME CLOTHES ON!
“Adorn yourselves in modest apparel!”
-And, Chi Alpha women, and many other girls in other Christians orgnizations on this campus… you need to REPENT~
All you girls who are calling yourselves Christians are no better than these women here on campus, with your skin-tight jeans, a lot of you are wearing short shorts, and you’re dressing up to be fashionable, sexy, wearing makeup and jewelry and broided hair, or doing your hair all up, highlights, and curling it all up, to be sexually attractive, and beautifying your body, like a gold ring in a pigs snout and you’re sinning!
You ought to be setting the standard on this campus, but you women are actually leading the world to be worse, by failing to be the SALT and LIGHT that you OUGHT TO BE!
You men who are leading in Chi Alpha also need to repent for not having led your sisters into modesty, by not having rebuked then long ago like you ought to have done!
Honestly, the immodesty in these hypocritical, puke-luke-warm para-churches…
It’s bringing SHAME on the BODY OF CHRIST!
You should all be humbling yourselves before God and crying out for a holiness standard of modesty in which you actually represent Jesus Christ on what a CHRISTIAN WOMAN who is professing Godliness, OUGHT TO WEAR.
====
david – I know exactly what the young man must be feeling. The lawn in front of Manzanita Hall at ASU faces south and in the spring would have upwards of a hundred near-naked female bodies laying out getting a tan. There were several rear-ender accidents every day on University Ave which passed by. 🙂
So let me get this right the Othodox Jewish press honor women by hiding them. I assume they dishonor men by showing them. What a load of……..
Justice Holmes – I did a wiki on this and found there are several levels of Orthodox Jews. This is probably the group that some would call Ultra Orthodox. And even then each rabbi makes his own interpretation.
BTW, strip clubs with men make plenty of money.
Utter madness. I think this is ridiculous, sequestering women or removing all their images to control male arousal.
I am not familiar with the law in Israel. Can the paper be sued for taking them out of the photo?
DavidM – thank you for the explanation. It sounds like there is great emphasis on men avoiding triggers for arousal. But even if they avert their eyes, don’t sit next to a woman, and don’t shake their hands, they are still in a world where approximately 50% of the population are women. By removing all contact with women, they make them more mysterious. It reminds me of Victorian days when the accidental flash of an ankle was titillating, whereas now men are more desensitized to this innocuous bit of anatomy. This intense repression also drives the popularity of strip clubs during Amish boys’ Rumspringa, even if they won’t admit it. Well, at least in those groups that don’t repress even the Rumspringa.
Karen S wrote: “I am not familiar with the law in Israel. Can the paper be sued for taking them out of the photo?”
I certainly hope not. News organizations have a right to censor their publications. If the women were nude, wouldn’t you support them covering them up through editing? From their perspective, they don’t want to give their readers a reason to objectify women. Many other organizations simply will not report on the story or maybe just not publish the photo.
Karen S wrote: “It reminds me of Victorian days when the accidental flash of an ankle was titillating, whereas now men are more desensitized to this innocuous bit of anatomy.”
Men are probably not any more desensitized than previously. We have muslim populations that will not allow more than eye slits for women. No matter how much society approves of women displaying their beauty in public, there are always these segments of society who feel compelled to have very high standards of modesty.
I think many modern women enjoy their sexual power over men. It is interesting to watch the newscasts on television. Men are always fully clothed and covered up. Women wear dresses showing a lot of leg, showing arms, even cleavage. Plenty of skin. Just watch a newscast and ask yourself about the way they are dressed: is this really gender equality? Walk in the mall, and you see the same thing. Men wear shorts that go down to the knee or below. Women wear short shorts or other ways of displaying their skin. Why the gender disparity? Women know they have this power over men, and many of them enjoy using that power. There are plenty of men who want them to do it too. This gender disparity is most evident by the fact that strip clubs displaying women are far more prevalent than strip clubs displaying men.